Deng Redux? Parsing the Grand Ambitions of China’s President

Does Chinese leader Xi Jinping really want to be the next Mao Zedong? Or is it Deng Xiaoping, the pragmatic architect of China’s market reforms, that he’s modeling himself after?

That question has come to the fore this week as China’s propaganda apparatus pulled out the stops to celebrate the 110th anniversary of Deng’s birth, which fell on Friday.

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It’s been clear for some time now that Xi is eager to leave his mark on Chinese history – that he sees himself in grander terms than either of his two predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, both of whom toiled in Deng’s shadow as hand-picked care-takers of the reforms that Deng unleashed and whom Xi has sometimes taken oblique shots at for not stemming the rot of corruption.

For much of the past year, many observers of China have argued that Xi sees himself as a strongman in the mold of Mao. For evidence, they point to the Mao-like rhetoric and rectification tactics Xi has unleashed, and to Xi’s refusal to publicly criticize the larger mistakes the Communist Party made under Mao’s leadership.

That Xi is clearly an admirer of at least some of the ways that Mao sought to keep China on the socialist path is no surprise, as Xi himself clearly believes that only a continued commitment to socialism can save China.

But then what to make of the public praise and attention lavished this week on Deng, Mao’s frequent nemesis and eventual successor?

The commemorations have been truly impressive, even for a man of Deng’s stature: an elaborate television series, a first officially sanctioned biography and countless laudatory speeches, including by Xi himself.

“Great times make great men [and] Comrade Deng Xiaoping is a great man arising from the great struggle of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation,” Xi said during the Party’s official celebration of Deng’s birth on Thursday.

Deng, Xi added, was someone who “proved during the practice of a lifetime to be a visionary thinker, statesman, and strategist, but someone who was also realistic, pragmatic and practical.”

The implication in all of this attention is that Xi sees himself as someone who grasps Deng’s visionary legacy, who understands that pragmatism is what’s required to move China further forward.

But lofty praise aside, Xi most likely doesn’t see himself as being the next Deng or the next Mao. Rather, he wants to carve out his own path, and is cleverly pirating Deng and Mao’s legacies as he searches for his own vision for China.

Every Chinese leader pays a certain amount of homage to his political predecessors, if only to maintain tradition and garner at least grudging support for reforms that cannot be avoided. Occasions such as this one praising Deng’s virtues are normally used as platforms for new leaders to simply pay tribute—and then get back to more pressing matters.

Yet here’s where Xi was different.

In lauding Deng, Xi genuflected only slightly to the status quo, instead reserving the bulk of his speech delivering the message that China, for all it owes to Deng, is now his to govern.

Rather than praise the specific reforms Deng introduced, Xi chose to emphasize his predecessor’s willingness to break with the past. Deng’s “whole being,” he insisted, “was filled with reform and innovation, indomitable courage, creative thinking that broke from the old, and a new type of élan.”

Xi also used Deng’s experiences to reinforce his own signature effort: the fight against corruption. “Comrade Deng Xiaoping consistently opposed privilege, and was against corruption, always insisting on the strictest requirements where his relatives and staff were concerned,” he said, shrewdly ignoring that it was Deng’s reforms that opened the door to much of the corruption and nepotism that now plague the Party.

Other of Xi’s pet themes likewise appeared in the speech, including strengthening the Communist Party and getting cadres to reconnect with the public, neither of which were central topics for Deng himself but are suddenly claimed to be part of the latter’s legacy.

While Xi’s effort to hitch his star to Deng’s is smart politics, it’s less clear how Xi plans to solidify his own place in such heady company. Mao wanted to utterly remake China. Deng wanted to let China remake itself. Xi’s own goal, the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” is similarly grand but far less concrete. What does it mean?

Xi’s anticorruption campaign raises similar questions. Yes, it’s bold and unprecedented, and it’s been remarkably resilient. Yet it has left more than a few wondering what comes next.

It’s good for party stability that Xi has again found a way to make the past serve his present political agenda—even if it’s largely involved pulling and pillaging from those who’ve preceded him. The next and very necessary step is pushing past a politics that many in China find unsettling and presenting in more practical and visionary terms what Xi himself stands for.

Russell Leigh Moses is the Dean of Academics and Faculty at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies. He is writing a book on the changing role of power in the Chinese political system.

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